The Dead of Summer Read online

  It was a summer with no clouds and no breeze. A summer of melting tarmac and stinking dustbins, of five-pence ice poles and other kids on their front lawns, shrieking under sprinklers. A dried-up summer of glittering pavements and long black shadows. And the sun beat down without respite, every day the same. It was only Kyle who changed, only Kyle who shaped our days.

  Days and days would pass where we’d just hang out and have a laugh. And when he was OK, talking about the caves, thinking up things for us to do, well like I’ve said, it was the best time of my life. I remember one time when we were up on Point Hill. The sun was just about to sink, the trees’ shadows lengthening in the last light like a crawling tide. We were lying on our backs, looking up at the sky.

  ‘When I grow up,’ Kyle said, suddenly, ‘I’m going to go all over the world. I’m going to travel to every country. I’ll go to places like Borneo and India and I’ll find caves and underground places that nobody else has dreamed of yet.’ I turned to lie on my side, my chin propped up in my hand, and watched him talk. The evening up there above London was very quiet and sweet smelling and Denis and Kyle seemed more solid, more real than usual against the softly glowing sky.

  Have you ever noticed how that happens sometimes, Doctor Barton? How in summer at twilight when the light is sad and vague, how objects and people are thrown forward; how the fading, dying light makes them stronger and more certain in the world somehow? It did that to my friends that night. I lay back and imagined Kyle in Borneo or India, discovering a cave, digging down bravely into the centre of the earth, a miner’s torch on his head the only light to guide him.

  ‘When I grow up,’ said Denis, ‘I am going to go to Africa to find my dad. I’ll help him spread the word of God.’ We were all silent for a while. ‘Either that,’ Denis continued, after some time, ‘or work in a cake shop.’

  ‘What about you?’ Kyle asked me ‘What will you do when you grow up?’

  I lay there, Kyle on my left, Denis on my right, and thought about how I didn’t want that summer to end, how I didn’t want that moment to end. An airplane trailed gold above us. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know.’

  But then there were the black days when Kyle would brood and stare and lash out at either Denis or me, or there’d be days when he’d barely speak and we’d just follow him about, our talk whittled down and wary while we waited for him to snap out of it, for things to go back to normal.

  The day of the tramp, before the night of the mines, was a particularly bad one. I’d woken that morning hot and sweaty from queasy dreams of a seven-year-old me, of secrets and bad things, of my mother’s tears and of waking up on piss-drenched sheets. The moment I saw Kyle on my doorstep my heart sank. You could almost see the shitty mood he was in like a dirty outline round him: a sick kind of Ready-Brek kid.

  We knocked for Denis then went down to the river. Even he was quiet that day and in the shadow of Kyle’s bad mood there grew between the three of us a pins-and-needles sort of atmosphere, a Chinese-burn sort of feeling while we waited to see what sort of turn the day would take. We found a dead rat on the river bank. ‘Must have drowned,’ said Kyle, kicking it, and we stood and lookedat its staring eyes and black mouth for a while. But then Denis spotted the pissed old tramp from before, sitting above us near the jetty, so, leaving the rat, we went to watch him.

  The three of us sat down a few benches away and Denis passed around the sandwiches his mum had packed for him that morning. The tramp was slumped over a bottle of wine, rowing with himself and carrying on, spraying spit and booze over his manky clothes. He reeked, even from that distance. Denis munched his sandwiches and stared intently at the old man. He was enjoying himself so much he let out a sudden roar of laughter, slamming his mouth shut like he’d caught a fly when the tramp turned to look at him.

  ‘Gis one of them butties, son,’ said the tramp. Horrified, Denis clutched his sandwich to his chest. I swallowed mine in one go and the tramp told us we were both a pair of cunts. He turned his attention to Kyle. ‘Go on, son,’ the tramp wheedled with his broken gob. ‘I haven’t eaten since yesterday. Spare a bit of grub for an old man?’

  Kyle stared back at him black and steady as the dead rat and the tramp stopped shouting and stared at his feet. Then he said, suddenly and without slurring, almost like a normal, sober person: ‘You’ll be like me one day, you little streak of piss. ‘

  Straightaway I felt Kyle shrivel and tense next to me on the bench and I held my breath. He passed me his half-eaten sandwich. ‘Hold this and don’t eat it,’ he ordered, getting up, the look in his eyes making my heart sink. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  We waited ages for him. Our bench was right in the sun and I started to feel very hot. My head ached. Denis looked longingly at the sandwich but we both knew better than to eat it. The tramp shot us a few sulky glances but other than that left us alone. He began singing to himself, the words too blurry-crazy to make any sense. Finally Kyle came back carrying a blue plastic bag. ‘Right,’ he said, crouching down behind our bench. ‘Give us my sandwich back.’ I passed it to him. From out of the bag he took the dead rat and a bottle of bleach granules. Denis and I watched him take the top bit off his sandwich, and with his door key, saw open the animal.

  ‘Yuk,’ said me and Denis at the same time. The rat stank. Using the key, Kyle scraped out bits of its innards, red and green and black, wet lumps and globules and gristles, onto the ham and cheese. ‘Looks like relish,’ he grinned. Then he scattered on some of the bleach granules. Finally he put the top bit of bread back on. It didn’t look very appetising but the tramp was pissed. And starving.

  ‘Kyle,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to be joking.’

  But he ignored me. I could have tried to stop him, I guess. I could have warned the tramp, but I didn’t, I just watched. Maybe I wanted to see if he would really do it.

  When Kyle reached the old man he leant down and said something I couldn’t catch, then he passed him the sandwich, a pasted-on smile on his face. The tramp nodded at Kyle, then raised the sandwich to his mouth.

  ‘Do something,’ I whispered, to Denis, to myself.

  Time seemed to stop. The tramp opened his mouth.

  ‘Noooooooaaaaaah!’ It was Denis. He lumbered over to them, his hands clasped in the shape of a gun. He did a clumsy sort of roll on the ground like he was ducking sniper fire, then jumped up in the tramp’s face, pointing his imaginary gun at him. ‘Put the sandwich down, sucker,’ he said in his Mr T voice. The tramp, his sandwich poised, gaped at him for a moment, then said ‘Furroff,’ and put the sandwich to his mouth.

  ‘Aaaaah-SO!’ Denis karate-chopped the sandwich out of the old man’s hand. And the four of us stared down at the little mess of triangle-shaped bread, rat’s guts, ham and cheese and bleach powder strewn across the walkway.

  ‘Christ,’ said the tramp, ‘on a bike.’

  We walked back to the bench, Denis stricken, Kyle white and knotted with anger.

  ‘You could have killed him,’ I said.

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Kyle. ‘He’s better off dead anyway.’ He pointed at the stinking mess of beard and pissy rags and bones and wine bottle still sitting a few benches away. ‘Look at him! Look at him! He’s better off dead.’

  ‘You can’t do that, Kyle. You’ll go to prison,’ I said. ‘You’ll go to prison and I, I …’ What will I do then? I nearly said.

  He interrupted, scornful and furious. ‘Don’t be stupid. It wouldn’t really have killed him, just made him a bit sick, and he didn’t fucking eat it anyway did he, so stop crying about it.’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ I said, the insult stinging me into silence.

  Kyle shrugged. He wouldn’t even look at Denis. Finally he turned on his heels and walked off back to Greenwich, and as usual, Denis and I hurried after him.

  That was the night I found the old sand mine. I found it by accident. Ironic, isn’t it, that it was the most important thing in the world to Kyle, the thing we’d been hunt
ing for all summer, and there was me, literally just stumbling across it.

  It was a night too hot to sleep and as I lay there in my bed I had the idea to go out exploring. Kyle did it, so why shouldn’t I? And I thought it might impress him. I thought I might even bump into him down by the river. Then he could take me with him to wherever he was going. Just the two of us. And if I didn’t find him, well then I could tell him all about it, and that might persuade him to take me with him next time he went out at night.

  It seemed like a good plan, but as I lay there in my hot bed I felt afraid, suddenly, of the empty black streets and of the thought of me alone in them. I must have drifted off to sleep because suddenly I was wide awake, with just the vague memory of a door closing somewhere. I lifted the net curtain and peered out. Saw Kyle illuminated in the dreary yellow glow of a street lamp.

  I got dressed in the dark, was outside in seconds, but even so he had already vanished. I hesitated and considered going back to bed, but the air was cool and sweet-smelling and I found myself walking in the direction of Greenwich. By the time I’d reached Deptford I hadn’t seen a soul, just ghostly streaks of cars that flashed past me in the moonlight, and a squashed cat.

  When I got to the river I stood looking over the railings at the water which was so high it almost reached my feet. The Naval College loomed behind me, its white stone floodlit a queasy green. It felt odd being there alone like that and the sense of excitement and adventure I’d felt on the way had almost gone. I imagined for a moment that I was the only person left on earth and the thought of it made me feel a bit panicky. The black river flopped and slurped below me and I wished that I was back at home in bed. I wondered where Kyle was, and though I wanted to see him I was anxious at the idea of him appearing, suddenly and shockingly in the darkness, so at the slightest sound I’d tense and look around for him.

  After a while the sky lightened and I felt braver. I decided to walk further along the river to the hideout, to see if Kyle was there and by the time I reached it the river had turned a golden violet and the factory and its grounds stood in pools of red. I was wide awake suddenly and finding no one there, decided to keep walking.

  I made my way through wasteland and vacant lots, filled with bushes of white flowers that in the warming air were already giving off a sweet and sour muskiness. I passed the gasworks and carried on through empty car parks until eventually I reached a scrapyard. It wasn’t the one we’d broken into before, and I remembered Kyle talking about it once, saying it was a no-go because it was always guarded by men with dogs. I thought how cool it would be to tell him that I’d been in there, that I was brave enough to risk the men and the dogs in the middle of the night. All by myself.

  It was surrounded by a high fence made from hardboard and corrugated iron topped with barbed wire, and I followed it round, looking for a way in. Finally I found a gap that someone had tried to cover up with chicken wire and planks of wood and I crawled through. We’d walked past the yard loads of times before and seen mountains of cars and mangled metal rising above the fences, heard men shouting and Radio One blasting from within, but now I realised that it was practically empty. They’d cleared it all out without us even noticing.

  The place was massive. One lone pile of cars still remained in the far corner but apart from that it was just a vacant stretch of land with a few car tyres dotted here and there, a pile of empty beer cans and a forgotten hand-painted sign that said ‘No Cheques, No Credit, No Time-wasters, No Wankers’. I felt brilliant. I’d been brave enough to break in, but it turned out there was no danger at all! I imagined casually mentioning it to Kyle one day, saying, ‘Oh yeah, that big scrapyard, past the gasworks? I went in one night, think it was about four in the morning, but there’s nothing in there now.’ Like I went out at night exploring all the time. Even Kyle would have to be impressed by that.

  I sat on a car tyre and watched the empty yard turn from red to orange to yellow as the day began to gather strength. That’s when I noticed the mound of earth and rubbish by the far fence. When I got closer to it I realised that it was odd, the way the ground just rose up like that, while the rest was so flat. Under some corrugated iron was a girder on top of a large piece of hardboard. I dragged the girder off and lifted the board to find a large hole. I couldn’t work out what it was at first, thought that for some reason the scrap metal men had dug it, then I stuck my head in the hole and smelt the cold dank blackness and realised that the ground sloped down into steps cut into the earth, that it was the opening to some sort of cave.

  God, I was so excited then. I’d found Kyle’s sand mines, the ones he was always banging on about, I was certain that I had. I was torn between going in straightaway to see what was down there, and being too chicken-shit to do it without a torch. I thought about it for a while, then decided to go back to the hideout to get Kyle’s. I rooted through Kyle’s beaten-up old metal chest, dug around past his books and rope and penknife, found his torch and pulled it out, but just before I closed the lid, I saw something that made me stop. A rag doll, and beneath that, a little girl’s red shoe. I knew immediately that they must be Katie’s, knew that Kyle wanted to hide them there for some reason, but couldn’t think of an explanation. Feeling confused and kind of guilty-excited that I’d discovered a secret of Kyle’s, I shut the chest and left.

  I ran the whole way there. There was still nobody about and I was glad; I’d been worried that I might bump into Kyle and I didn’t want him to know about the mine yet, I wanted to explore it first then surprise him with it later.

  I couldn’t believe how ordinary the empty scrapyard looked in the sunshine: you’d never guess what lay beneath it. I shone the torch into the hole and wished suddenly that Kyle and Denis were with me. Finally I took a deep breath and on my hands and bum, I lowered myself down the forty or so uneven steps.

  It would be easy to say now that the horror of what happened later affected my memory of how I felt that first time I went into the mine. But it’s not true. I will never forget how awful it felt that first time, never. And the further down I went the worse it got. I was not claustrophobic and I had never been scared of the dark, but I felt sick suddenly and horribly anxious, like something was pressing on my chest. I immediately and very strongly felt like I couldn’t bear being there and every instinct in my body told me to turn around and go back up to the sunlight. But how could I? It was the sand mine, it was Kyle’s sand mine and I had found it first. So I told myself to get a grip and edged my way down further.

  Finally I reached a small chamber about the size of two bus shelters. The walls were pale yellow and when I touched them they were dry and firm but with a strange powdery grittiness. Sand. My flashlight shone looming arcs on the ceiling. The coldness was immediate and shocking, it seeped right through you and made you long for the warm fresh air. There was a seeping bitterness in the air.

  As the light from my torch swept over the walls I noticed something that nearly made my heart stop. A huge grinning face with big, pupil-less eyes etched into the sandy wall, staring down at me. As I slowly turned and followed the light’s beam, I felt my scalp prickle as I noticed more and more of them; all different sizes, some with no ears, some with no mouth, but all with those weird, blank eyes. In the torchlight the lines seeming to twitch and pulse in the hard, cold sand like veins under skin. And underneath each one a name: Mary, John, Bet, Tilly, Mark, Andrew. Dozens of names, dozens of faces. The effect was so creepy that I kept turning round and round flashing the torch everywhere to reassure myself that the people who had made those faces weren’t hiding somewhere, malingering in the gloom. Looking back, that was the worst thing about it; the sensation that you weren’t ever actually alone down there.

  I remembered that Kyle had once told me that one of the Greenwich mines had been used during the war as an air-raid shelter and I imagined the people all huddled down there hiding from the bombs. I felt them waiting, frightened, in that tiny, glowing chamber, below the mental, banging, dying earth.
All those people, etching out to pass the time those silent eyes that watched me now, waiting to see what I’d do next. It took every ounce of my will power not to leave.

  The walls narrowed and then opened up again into an even bigger chamber, twice the size of the first one. I went in and sat on the floor, my flashlight casting yellow orbs on yet more faces. I realised, by its strange angle and un-evenness that there had been some kind of collapse, blocking what were probably more caves behind. I wondered briefly if anyone had been down there when it happened. I felt breathless suddenly and no longer able to fight my desperation to get out. I scrambled back up the steps and dragged the hardboard and the girder back over the entrance.

  The empty scrapyard looked exactly the same as when I’d left it, as if for the time I was down there the world had just paused and waited for me before it carried on turning again. The light hurt my eyes after the darkness. I felt almost hysterical with relief to be out of there and it took a long time for my heart to stop thumping. But on the way back to the hideout I told myself over and over how great it was going to be telling Kyle what I’d found. I kept picturing his face, how pleased and impressed with me he’d be, and I felt my spirits soar.

  So why didn’t I tell him for so long? I was going to, I meant to. But I guess I just decided that it was my trump card, I guess I sensed that I might need it one day. I never felt certain with Kyle, that he wasn’t always about to tell me to fuck off and leave him and Denis alone. I was always afraid that one day they’d stop knocking for me. And when that day came, it would be good to have a bargaining tool; a reason to keep me hanging around. Besides, I’d never had something of my own before; I’d never had my own secret. Well, not a good one like that, anyway.

  nine

  New Cross Hospital. 4 September 1986. Transcription of interview between Dr C Barton and Anita Naidu. Police copy.

  I made myself look, in the end. With the lighter I could see Denis lying a few feet away. If I stretched my leg out I could touch his head with my foot. His neck was all twisted and his left eye was open and staring and the right one was shut. Above his eyebrow he had this big wound and I remember thinking that it looked a bit like a mouth with purple lips, the gleaming bit of bone poking through like teeth. There was dried blood on his face and in his hair and thick, black blood across his belly all over his Inspector Clouseau T-shirt, his favourite one, and his skin was too pale, it was much too pale. And further away, where it was too dark for me to see, there was another body. Dressed in pink, yellow hair.